Celebrating Christmas With Laurel and Hardy at the Old Town Music Hall

This weekend is the annual Christmas festival at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, California. I was able to see last night's show and loved it. This festival is always a treat and this year was no exception. As I have mentioned many times, the Old Town Music Hall is one of my favorite places to see old movies and a place that I recommend all my fellow film lovers go to when they are in Southern California. If you are interested in going (and why wouldn't you be) you can see the schedule and what movies are coming up here.

There was a Laurel and Hardy theme this year, which was no problem with me or anyone else there. The films this year included both a silent Laurel and Hardy short and a sound feature, both Christmas themed.

The silent short was Big Business (1929). This may be the duo's best silent comedy and maybe one of the laugh out loud funniest silent comedies. In this film Stan and Ollie are selling Christmas trees in California. They aren't very good at this and fail to sell one to their first two customers. Their third customer though is when their real problems begin. This customer is the one and only James Finlayson (one of the best supporting comic actors in the history of the movies and one that has proved on various occasions to be the perfect foil for Laurel and Hardy). At first this is just another customer who doesn't want a Christmas tree. However when he closes the door and the Christmas tree gets caught in it, this ends up causing one of the biggest slapstick fights in silent comedy history. Supposedly this film was originally going to revolve around Stan and Ollie trying to sell Christmas trees to each new customer, with the James Finlayson scenes playing a smaller role, but the crew found out that this was the funniest part of the movie and that most of the film should revolve around that.

This film perfectly shows what Laurel and Hardy do best. It follows their familiar, but surefire formula of tit for tat. Someone does something to Stan and Ollie, and they do something back to him. This continues until it reaches ridiculous extremes. This in the end represents another essential element of many of the duo's best movies taking a simple idea and pushing it to ridiculous extremes in a surprisingly believable way. This is one of the most pure and funniest examples of both these formulas and therefore one of the duo's laugh out loud funniest films, silent or sound. This is as good as it gets.

The great thing about the Old Town Music Hall is that I got to see this film the way it was intended to be seen. This is with an audience and with live musical accompaniment (by the very talented Bill Field on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ (a vintage 1925 organ that was made to accompany silent movies)). If you have never been able to see a silent film this way you are missing out. This is a completely different experience than watching these film on TV or DVD and is something I think every film lover should do in their life. The film feels so new and fresh, even to someone who has seen it as many times as I have. This showing also proves that the film is still a crowd pleaser, as the audience was in hysterics. It is rare to see a movie audience enjoying themselves as much as one watching Laurel and Hardy, and with a film like Big Business, this is especially true.
 
After an intermission we watched the feature film, Babes in Toyland (1934, also with Laurel and Hardy). I have written about this film before on this blog as you can read here. Because of this I won't write much about the movie here, but what I will say is like Big Business this is a perfect crowd pleaser. The audience was howling with laughter at the funny scenes here and again seeing it with an audience again made it feel fresh and new even to someone who has seen this movie as many times as I have. If you have a chance to see this with an audience don't miss it for the world.

Like all shows at the Old Town Music Hall, the films were not the only part of the night. Before hand we got treated to some music on the Mighty Wurlitzer. First a very talented young man named Edward Torres played a medley of to two classic Christmas songs from the 1940's and then the incredibly talented Bill Field took over playing a medley of many great Christmas carols. This was followed by a sing-a-long where all the words appeared on the screen. These songs included White Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells and Silver Bells.


I believe going to the movies should be an experience and a great night out and the Old Town Music Hall always provides just that. Again if you are ever in Southern California this place is a must go.


-Michael J. Ruhland